(MBABANE 25 June 2012)\u00a0 The Swaziland government has renewed the contract of the country’s chief justice, who is a Lesotho national, saying there were no local judges suitable for the job, an official said on Monday.<\/p>\n
Michael Ramodibedi’s appointment comes despite a new constitution adopted in 2005 that says only Swazi nationals are eligible for the job from July 26, 2012.<\/p>\n
“Swazis were considered for the position of Chief Justice, but none of them merited appointment to the post,” said Lorraine Hlophe, the secretary of the Judicial Service Commission (JSE).<\/p>\n
The constitution, adopted on July 26, 2005, says that “a person who is not a citizen of Swaziland shall not be appointed as chief justice of a superior court after seven years from the commencement of this constitution”.<\/p>\n
Ramodibedi first arrived in Swaziland in 2006 to take up the position of acting judge on the appeal court, and was appointed acting chief justice in 2010.<\/p>\n
During his tenure as the country’s most senior judge, Ramodibedi has issued an order that makes it impossible to sue King Mswati III, Africa’s last absolute monarch.<\/p>\n
Last year, Swazi lawyers staged a protest demanding he be sacked, after he fired judge Thomas Masuku, one of the few judges critical of Mswati.<\/p>\n
His contract is indefinite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(MBABANE 25 June 2012)\u00a0 The Swaziland government has renewed the contract of the country’s chief justice, who is a Lesotho national, saying there were no local judges suitable for the job, an official said on Monday. Michael Ramodibedi’s appointment comes despite a new constitution adopted in 2005 that says only Swazi nationals are eligible for […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","region-lesotho","region-south-africa","region-southern-africa","type-news-articles","item-year-490","item-theme-discrimination","item-theme-ethnic-racial-religious"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3427,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions\/3427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}